


a secret told to the mouth instead of the ear

by fardareismai



Series: Imagine Claire and Jamie (Prompts from the blog that I have fulfilled) [13]
Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Canon Divergence, F/M, Kissing, outlander canon divergence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-04-28 12:05:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5090081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fardareismai/pseuds/fardareismai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Imagine Claire and Jamie's first kiss if it wasn't at the wedding and there wasn't Jack Randall's threat if they didn't hand Claire over, and then maybe if they had the wedding at Lallybroch. PS. Sorry if this prompt is too long, thank you so much for this blog, you guys are the best!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Jamie and I arrived at Leoch again damp, but in good spirits, both of us feeling that we had accomplished something admirable in saving the Tanner’s lad from permanent mutilation.

He helped me off my horse, his large, warm hands at my waist, my body sliding against his, and something came over me and, as he set me down on the ground, I rose up on my toes and kissed him.

I could, perhaps, have blamed Geilie’s suggestions, or the residual adrenaline from danger, or perhaps just a desire to thank him in some way that I thought he might accept, but to do so would be dishonest.  I kissed him because he was kind, and good, and gentle. Because he had a sense of fairness and honour.  Because he did not treat me with suspicion.  I kissed him because of his bonnie blue eyes, his ever-smiling mouth, his broad shoulders, and his red hair that was sticking up on the top of his head.

I kissed him because I missed Frank. 

I kissed him because I wanted him.

It was not a long kiss, by any means.  Just a moment where my lips captured his and found the heat of his mouth- un-quenched by the cold air or the rain- sent a shiver of pleasure down my spine.  For all that, it was a chaste kiss, dampened only by the rain.

I stepped away after only a moment and could feel the blush rising in my cheeks.

“ **I… I’m… Thank you again, Jamie** ,” I stammered, “ **for what you did in the village.  And for coming to fetch me.  And-** ”  


I was cut off of speaking any more inanities by his mouth over mine.  There was nothing hesitant or chaste about this kiss, and his arms around my waist might have been iron bands.  I could not have escaped if I’d wanted to.

I did not want to.

I had kissed men before.  Not so many as some, but more than others.  In the war I had kissed men not my husband.  Usually, as I had just done with Jamie- quick and gentle, and ultimately chaste.  Occasionally such a kiss had gone farther, usually under the impetus of survival of some horrific experience.

This was nothing like any of those.  Jamie’s mouth was compelling in a way no man’s had been before- even Frank’s.  He lit a spark in me that I could not ignore- fanning a flame that I had thought carefully controlled.  Frank had always been able to stoke that fire, rousing me to his touch skillfully, and I thought that only he would be able to do so again.

How wrong I had been.

Jamie was younger than Frank by several years, and hadn’t had quite as much practice (and none with me at all) and yet Jamie brought what I had always thought of as a comforting fireplace blaze into wild life like the bonfires of Beltane, rousing me so quickly and furiously that when he finally drew away from me I found that my head was spinning and my knees were weak.  I might have been drunk.

I had always thought such things were the realm of the romance novelist and that I, sensible, competent Claire Beauchamp Randall, would never experience such a thing.

And yet I felt Jamie’s arms tighten around me again as I swayed against him, not quite able to manage my own weight on my legs.

After a long, steadying breath, however, my mind seemed to return.  I was a married woman, and in no position to be kissing young men and liking it so much.  Particularly young men who had been born some 200 years before me and had the English army after their blood.

I stepped out of the circle of his arms, still swaying slightly, but in control of myself once again.

“ **Thank you again for your help today, Mr. McTavish,** ” I said, not quite able to meet his eyes.  I began to walk toward the entrance of the castle when he stopped me with a word.  


“ **Claire** ,” he said, and I stopped.  I wasn’t sure that I wanted to turn and look at him, but I was no coward, any more than he.  I spun and met his eyes, lucent blue in the dying light.  


“ **You’ll ken the name’s not McTavish?** ” he said, raising one ruddy brow in question.  


I nodded.

“ **It’s Fraser,** ” he said.  He opened his mouth as though to say more, but shut it without saying anything.  


I nodded again, cognizant of the gift of that name, and that trust.

“ **Thank you, Jamie Fraser,** ” I said, then turned and hurried into the castle where I could be alone with my thoughts.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Imagine Claire makes her escape during ‘The Gathering’; how far would she get before Dougal et al caught her? How (if he could) would Jamie help her? :D
> 
> Follow up please to claire kissing jamie at leoch when they return from helping the tanner’s kid. Maybe claire has another moment with jamie after geordie dies at the boar hunt when she goes to the stables, I dont know something though.

I was almost ashamed at how pleased I was to find Jamie Fraser in the stables that night.  Since the day in the village when I had kissed him (and then he had kissed me) I had scarcely seen him.  He was involved in the business of the Gathering, and I was involved in the business of cleaning up after it.

I hadn’t wanted to leave without seeing him.  Without saying… something.

When I was being sober and reasonable, I told myself that all I wanted to say was ‘goodbye.’

When I woke in the night from dreams of his kiss and the fire that had blazed to life inside of me with it, I knew that I wanted to beg him to come with me.

I had dithered back and forth about whether to seek him out and tell him my plan to run, or to go without a word.  My rational mind insisted that it would be easier to just leave- simpler for both of us if we pretended that we’d never known each other.  He would return to his life and, I was sure, soon forget the sassenach who had interrupted it so briefly.  I would return to mine as well though, through the nature of my adventures if not Jamie’s own person, I thought I would never forget.

I had convinced myself that I was perfectly happy with this rational course until I tripped over him in the dark of the stable and came face to face with him- heavy-eyed and absurdly charming with straw in his hair- and I realized that I could not just leave him without a word.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I might ask you the same question,” he answered, sitting up and brushing the straw from his coat.

I said nothing, afraid that the truth “ _looking for you_ ” might come out if I spoke.

“I suppose I can guess.”

I was pleased for the stable’s darkness that hid my blush at this apparent reading of my mind and opened my mouth to deny it, but was interrupted.

“How far did you think you could get on a strange horse, in a strange country, alone, in the dark of night, with half the fighting men of the clan MacKenzie after you by morning?”

“I… I wouldn’t have to go alone.  You could come?”

I nearly slapped my hand over my mouth, shocked that the words had come from me.

“Oh Christ, I’m so sorry, Jamie.  I didn’t mean it.  I know it’s safe for you here and you shouldn’t- you can’t put yourself in danger for my sake.  Don’t… just pretend I didn’t say anything.  Perhaps you’re right and… well… I should go back to the castle now.”

I turned, so flustered that even thoughts of escape and return to my own time had fled me.  I could think now of nothing but getting away from Jamie Fraser and, hopefully, never having to speak to him again.

He grabbed my hand as I spun, stopping me in my tracks, however.

“Aye.  I’ll help you then.”

I froze, then turned slowly to look at him.

The shadows made his expressive face a dark-hollowed mystery, and I could not read what he was thinking as I stood, my hand caught in his.

“It will be difficult.  We canna take horses, and we’ll have to take to the heather, and we willna be able to go straight to the coast or to my home or my clan, but aye, I think we could do it.  We’ll sleep cold out of doors, and spend more days wet and uncomfortable and hungry than you’re probably used to but, if you’re set on it, aye, I’ll help you.”

“But it’s safe for you here.  Why-”

Jamie snorted a laugh.  “I dinna think there is a safe place for me anywhere in the Highlands, but it isna among the MacKenzies if there is.  France might be safe, but no Scotland, and no Leoch.”

“What?”

“It’s a long story, and not one we have time for if you want to get away tonight, aye?”

I hesitated for one heartbeat, then another.  Could I trust myself with this charming, brave, beautiful man for the time it would take to trek halfway across the Scotland to return to my husband?

Did I have a choice?

“Let’s go.”

It ended up being much simpler than I could have hoped.  Jamie, unlike me, knew where the guard posts were and seemed able to see in the dark like a cat.

There was one sticky moment, however, as we rounded a corner when a chorus of voices including Rupert, Angus, and Willie could be heard coming toward us.

“Forgive me, Claire,” Jamie said.  

Before I could respond at all, he was kissing me, my back against the castle wall, his hands shaping my bottom in so familiar a way that I might have been horrified were I not so entranced by his mouth.

“Is that Jamie?” Rupert asked from some distance away, at the very edge of my perceptions which were rapidly being taken hostage by Jamie’s tongue.

“I think so,” Angus’ voice.  “And who’s that with him?  It’s no…”

“Aye, it is.”

“Should we… should we bring him up to the castle?” Willie’s voice was hesitant.

“You canna interrupt a man when he’s… It’s bad for the health,” Angus said, sounding uncertain.

“He’ll come up when he’s finished.  Dinna take too long, Jamie m’lad,” Rupert called.

Jamie gave no response but to tighten his grip on my waist and re-angle his head for a new onslaught on my mouth.

The chuckles of the three MacKenzie men faded away as they vanished.

Jamie pulled away from me and, with a steadiness that annoyed me in my thoroughly muddled state, pulled me along behind him.

“Come on.  They’ll be back in a few minutes and we must be away before they are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey lovely AO3 readers! I don't know if you know this, but these are all responses to prompts on imagineclaireandjamie.tumblr.com. If you want more of this or any of the other Jamie and Claire stories in this series, please go to that site and submit a request. I don't take continuation requests for these from AO3.
> 
> You don't have to have a Tumblr to request, but if you do you should totally follow us because the stories by my fellow mods are fantastic (better than mine by miles, actually!).


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Loved that one where Claire and Jamie flee together the night of the gathering. Could you continue it? Maybe snuggling for warmth in the dark and cold night?

Jamie had promised cold and wet nights, and so he had delivered it seemed as I glared into yet another dampening mist.

For a moment I thought longingly of the warmth of the castle- clean sheets and hot food and the warming power of whiskey and wine- but just as quickly banished the thought.  A comfortable prison it had been, but a prison nonetheless.  The heather to which we had taken had its detriments to cleanliness and warmth, but I was free of watchers and suspicion and I could breathe easily for the first time since I had fallen through the stones.

Or nearly easily.

The cause of my shortness of breath was sitting across the minuscule fire that he had allowed, feeding it sticks and twigs that he kept in his sporran to stay dry and looking entirely unaffected by the wet, clinging nature of my gown, though I had trouble looking away from the way the wet linen of his shirt turned transparent over his shoulders.

The lad was a mystery to me still.  I thought he could not be as unaffected by the growing intimacy between us as he pretended, and yet I never seemed able to read his face.

The night of the gathering we had kept moving nearly all night to get as far from Leoch as possible before the men started chasing us with the morning light.

“There’s a cave,” he had told me the only time we had stopped moving that night, kneeling at the side of a stream.  “If we can get there, we can lie low until they move on.  They willna find it.”

We had barely made it before the first fingers of sunlight had shown themselves over the rocky mountains.

As he had guessed, the men of Clan Mackenzie were only an hour or two behind us- much faster on their horses in the daylight than we had been afoot through the night.  For all that, Jamie had also been correct in one other respect: they did not find us.

The cave was tiny, and for it to hold the pair of us I was forced to sit in Jamie’s lap, his arms around me.  It was comforting though, for we could not keep a fire and, as is the nature of caves, it was chilly in the heart of the Earth.  Jamie seemed to generate heat even sitting still.

“Where will we go?” I whispered.  We could still hear patrols passing on occasion, and I dared not raise my voice.

“We should get off of the MacKenzie lands,” he murmured into my ear, making me shiver.  

Jamie seemed to misinterpret this, and shifted to bring his plaid around the pair of us, shifting me against him.  Like that first night in the castle, I felt him stir beneath his kilt, but I made no indication of the fact, nor did he.

When he had resettled us, now wrapped cozily in his tartan, he resumed.

“The other clans may not be so friendly as the MacKenzies, but the land here is better-known, so we’d do better to go where they are less familiar.  If we avoid people, I think we willna come to a fight with anyone for trespass.”

“And if we run into the English?”

I felt Jamie shudder slightly with laughter.  “The English canna find us in the heather, I promise you that, Sassenach.”

This assurance made me feel better, and I leaned more fully back into him.

I was exhausted and hungry and sleep stole over me in a surprising rush.

I may have dreamed it, but I could swear that I rose to the surface of wakefulness- not breaking through, but close enough to have some consciousness of the waking world- to hear Jamie speaking.

“And will you let me stay by your side, mo nighean donn, mo cridhe?  Will you let me care for you and protect you?  Would you have me if I told you how I want you?  Or would you laugh if I said I never want to let you out of my arms again?”

I could not answer him then.  Beneath the surface of dreams, I could not speak, but if I could have, in that between-place- neither awake nor asleep- I would have told him only the truth.

Now, however, I was sure that it had been a dream.  The lad did not even look at me.

For three nights now, we had been traveling into the Grant land, sleeping cuddled together under a single plaid, and he had done nothing but treat me as a companion.  He touched me no more than necessary, save when we slept, and he said nothing that might lead one to believe that he cared for me at all.

In truth, it made my head spin, and I realized with a start that I was tired of it.

“Jamie,” I said suddenly.  My voice sounded loud and strange after so long not speaking, and his head started up as though he had forgotten I was there.

“Jamie,” I tried again, softening my voice to a murmur that could be heard over the patter of rain on the soft leaves.  “Why did you kiss me the night we left Leoch?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked:  
> Will there be more of "a secret told to the mouth instead of the ear" I'm invested and and at the moment it seems open ended with lots of potential.

_“Why did you kiss me the night we left Leoch?”_

Jamie shifted uncomfortably on the rock he’d chosen as his seat for the night, not meeting my eyes.  I was charmed to see that his ears had gone red.

Suddenly, however, he stilled and looked at me carefully.

“Why did you kiss _me_ that day when I brought you back from the village?”

It was my turn to go red with embarrassment and not be able to meet his eyes.

“I’ll tell you why I kissed you, if you’ll tell me why you kissed me.”

I looked up at him, and he was watching me very seriously.

“But I’d ask you one thing.  If you canna tell me the truth, I would prefer that you told me nothing.  There can, I think, be secrets between us, but we canna lie to each other, not when we’re forced to trust each other with our lives as now.”

It was a fair request he made of me, and one with which I thought I could comply.

“In all things, or just in this?”

He blinked, looked away for a moment, and then met my eyes again, his blue eyes seeming to see straight through to my heart.  I thought, perhaps, I did not need to tell him any truths, for he could see them already.

“I’ll no lie to you, and you’ll promise me the same.  You needna tell me every one of your secrets- I think we have room enough in what it is between us for secrets- but I’d have honesty of you.”

I couldn’t tell him everything- if for no other reason than because he would never believe it- but I could be honest with him in those things I could tell him, including this.  He deserved that of me.

“I agree.  So why did you kiss me?”

A small smile played at the corner of his mouth.

“I think you should go first, as you kissed me before I kissed you.”

That was true enough, though not what I’d had in mind.  I had, however, agreed to the rules of the game, and sighed, thinking of what I must tell him.

“I did it because you were kind and brave, and because I have been very lonely since my husband…” I glanced up in time to see a flash of pain in his eyes and hastened to clarify.  “It wasn’t because of him though.  I didn’t- I don’t- think of him when I think of you.  You’re… you’re very different.”

It was true, what I’d said, but not the whole truth, and I took a deep breath to continue, girding myself against it.

“I kissed you because I wanted to.”

“Because you wanted me?” he asked, softly.

I looked up into those fathomless blue eyes and nodded silently.

“Aye, well, and that’s why I kissed you as well.  I did it to keep you safe and help you run away, and to keep myself from being stabbed in the back by the Mackenzies, but I did it because I wanted you more than I’ve wanted anything in a verra long time.”

“Wanted?” I asked, wondering if I wanted to know the answer.

“Want,” he confirmed.  “And you?”

Even had I not given my word, faced with those blue eyes, I could not have lied.

“Want,” I whispered.

Jamie only nodded, though his eyes burned like flames.  He did not try to reach out and touch me, and yet his look burned like a caress.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked: I *want*!! More of "Secret" please!!!
> 
> anononymous said: Well now that there’s some amount of tension between J/C after their admissions as to why they kissed one another, will we be seeing what happems next between these 2 crazy kids? Happily ever after?
> 
> In no way is this "happily ever after" just yet. Consider this my (slightly cruel) gift to you on the occasion of my birthday.

“I’ve another question for you then,” Jamie said, his blue eyes as hot as flames.

“Yes?”  Had it been any other moment, I might have felt ashamed at how breathy and desperate my voice sounded.  As it was, I could think of almost nothing but those eyes.

“Where are we going?”

It was like a bucket of cold water had been poured over me with those words.  I remembered, suddenly, that I was still married.  That I could not be for this young man what he wanted me to be.

And, if I were honest, what I wanted to be.

I dropped my eyes from his and answered, though the words tasted of acid in my mouth.

“I must go back to where you found me,” I said, softly.

“You would not have me take you to France?” he asked, and I could hear the ironic smile in his voice.

He had, of course, guessed that I had no one waiting for me in France, as Colum and Dougal had.

“No,” I said and confirmed what he already knew.  “There is nothing for me in France.  No one waiting.”

“We found you in the wilderness, Lass.  I would see you safe, and you’d let me.  I would take you wherever it is you’d go.”

“Do you recall where it was you found me?”

He pursed his lips as though unwilling to say, then changed his mind.  “Murtagh said he found you at the base of the fairy hill outside Inverness.  Is that where I’m to take you now?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

He hesitated another moment.  “Is it true what they say about you in the village then?  That you’re a witch or… or a fairy?”

“I…” I hesitated.  Surely not every person could do what I had done: fall through the stones into time.  If it were something that everyone could do, you’d hear of it all the time, but you don’t.

No… it must be something else.

“To tell you truly, Jamie,” I said, thinking hard, “I don’t know.  I wouldn’t have said so but… I do not really know.  Perhaps I am.  Would it matter?”

For some reason, this seemed to dispel much of his tension.

“No,” he said with a small smile.  “If you were contracted to the Devil or from the otherworld, I would want you all the same.  But if you dinna know what you are, then you canna have bewitched me, aye?”

“I don’t think so.  I didn’t do it intentionally if I did.”

If I hadn’t known any better, I might have thought _him_ the sorcerer, for he moved so quickly from across the fire to my side that there seemed no intervening time.

“And yet, bewitched I am,” he murmured, his hand already burying itself in my hair.

And then he was kissing me and, for all that I knew I must return to husband and duty, to time and place, I kissed him back.  I kissed him because there was honesty between us.  I kissed him because I did not want to go back at all.

His sharp ears picked up the sound that the rush of blood in mine drowned out and Jamie was on his feet, dirk drawn, while I was still gasping.

He growled something in Gaelic, directed at the dark.  I did not know precisely what it meant, but the threat was clear.  Someone had found us.


End file.
